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Today on November
29th, people across the world are taking to the streets on the eve of the UN
Climate Talks in Paris to demand bold, urgent action on the climate crisis.
I am writing to ask that you join IVAW in this action.

IVAW is proud to be
sending two Board members Chair Shawna Foster and Co-Chair Derek Matthews, on
the upcoming It Takes Roots delegation to Paris and we are
hoping that you can help us support them, and their many colleagues
representing frontline communities on their journeys!

To support this
massive mobilization, the It Takes Roots (ITR) delegation has joined the call
from the People’s Climate Movement to participate in a virtual climate march
where thousands will send in photos or messages about why they want action on
climate to make sure world leaders hear us.

2)
Get others to join you in action Today. Feel free to pass along this email
message, and to encourage people to take action today with their loved ones.
This is a great opportunity to talk about the climate crisis, and lift
up real solutions that people are working on.

This
virtual action is part of a longer and larger strategy at the COP21, on the
streets of Paris, and after the delegates come home. We know that the
solutions offered by global “leaders” will not meet the needs of the people
and the planet. We know that they will capitulate to false solutions
like cap and invest, and REDDs (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
Forest Degradation). We need your participation to pull this action
off.
Let’s make sure they get the message with a virtual march showing photos of
people all across the country sharing why we are demanding climate action
now.

By Jeff Goodell,Rolling
Stone,December 9,
2014 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-secret-deal-to-save-the-planet-20141209 [At this moment the US and Chinese agreement
to limit growth and carbon is mainly promises, and is far from enough to put
the world on track to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius, but both leaders,
Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping, have
finally acknowledged their country’s responsibility, have made concrete offers
of caps and reductions, and have set deadlines.
One observer sees it as a major breakthrough in “the logjam of climate
politics.” The possibility for success
at the Paris meeting in 2015 has significantly increased.—Dick]

Aweek after Democrats took a drubbing in the midterm
elections, as pundits were suggesting Presidents Obama should start packing up
the Oval Office, he stood beside Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Great Hall
of the People in Beijing and announced a historic climate deal that may be one
of the most significant accomplishments of his presidency. In the works for
nearly a year, the agreement unfolded in a series of secret meetings in the
United States and China and was carried out with the brinkmanship and bravado
of a Vegas poker game.

The agreement comes at a
time when awareness of the risks of climate change has never been higher,
thanks to the sobering accretion of extreme weather events around the world.
But the prospects for significant action to reduce carbon pollution have never
been lower. Which is why virtually everyone in the climate world was stunned
when the agreement was announced on November 12th.

Negotiations started in
February when Todd Stern, the State Department's lead climate negotiator, put
in an exploratory phone call to his counterpart in the Chinese government, Xie
Zhenhua. Stern was in Seoul, South Korea, and would soon be joining his boss,
Secretary of State John Kerry, in Beijing for a series of high-level meetings
with the Chinese leadership, including Xi Jinping. Kerry, long a forceful
advocate for action on climate change, simply wanted Stern to see if there was
any possibility the upcoming talks might yield a joint public statement on the
issue. Beyond that, the State Department team sensed that the Chinese were
looking for areas of common ground to help improve relations. White House
counselor John Podesta, President Obama's de facto point person on climate,
agreed that it was an idea worth pursuing.

Stern knew that Xie, with
whom he has shared many dinners at climate conferences all over the world, was
a straight shooter whose goal, like his own, was to actually make progress on
solving the climate crisis. "I made the case that if the deal were done
well, and it had enough ambition, it could help to build momentum for
Paris next year," recalls Stern. "Xie was interested. But there were
obviously a lot of issues to work out. So we proceeded cautiously."

Obama arrived in the White
House in 2009 determined to take on climate change. In his first term in
office, he instituted tough new automotive fuel efficiency standards and
pushed through $90 billion for clean energy in the stimulus bill. But after legislation
to limit CO2 pollution failed to pass in the Senate in 2010, climate
change seemed to slide down the list of issues that engaged the president. That
changed after his re-election, when he ordered the Environmental Protection
Agency to write new rules to govern carbon emissions from power plants and
brought in Podesta. Early this past summer, those plans took shape when the EPA
finally announced its plan to crack down on carbon pollution from existing
power plants.

But Podesta understood that
no matter what the U.S. did, it wouldn't matter without larger global
cooperation. The last major round of international climate negotiations in
Copenhagen in 2009 had been a festival of conspiracy and betrayal, ending with
an 11th-hour, closed-door confrontation between rich and poor nations that only
deepened the cynicism among many that the world would ever strike an agreement
to cut carbon pollution. A year from now, the world is set to meet in Paris for
another summit. Would this next meeting be any different? Probably not,
concluded Podesta and the State Department's climate negotiators, unless they
could get China to the table.

It was not just because
China was the world's biggest polluter (an honor the U.S. had held until about
2006), but the Chinese also hold tremendous sway over developing nations of the
world. Get China to take action, and chances were good that India, Brazil,
South Korea, Mexico, Indonesia and other increasingly prosperous nations would
come along too.

A Chinese man wears a mask as he waits to cross the road near
the CCTV building during heavy smog in Beijing, China on November 29th, 2014
(Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty)

But moving climate to the
top of the agenda, Podesta realized, would be difficult. "In China, the
politics of climate change are different than in the U.S.," says Li Shuo,
a Greenpeace activist in Beijing. "No one in China denies climate change
is a problem. But we have more immediate problems – like air and water
pollution, most of which come from our dependence on coal." According to
one study, air pollution contributed to the premature death of 1.2 million
people in China in 2010. "China today is a lot like America was in the
1960s and Seventies – the rivers are on fire, the sky polluted, and the rising
middle class is not going to put up with it anymore," says Jigar Shah, a
solar-industry pioneer. For U.S. negotiators, it was important to convince the
Chinese that cutting carbon pollution would not only clean up the air but also
lead to more political stability for the regime. "They will have a social
revolt on their hands if they don't come up with a way of dealing with
this," U.S. Ambassador Max Baucus told me bluntly when I was in Beijing
this past summer.

But for the U.S., nothing
with China comes easy. "The relationship between China and the U.S. has
been on a downhill slide," says author Orville Schell, who has been
writing about China since the 1970s and now heads the Center on U.S.-China
Relations at the Asia Society in New York. The Chinese fear the U.S. has a long-term
strategy to contain China, while the U.S. fears China's increasing strength
means trouble for American interests in Asia and beyond.

On top of the rising
superpower tensions, climate negotiations are made more difficult by the fact
that China is a developing nation. It may be the world's number-one polluter by
volume, but its per-capita emissions are far lower than ours. The Chinese argue
(with some justification) that global warming is a problem that has been
largely caused by 200 years of fossil-fuel burning, mostly in the U.S. and
Europe, and so it is the West that bears most of the responsibility for fixing
it. Which meant that if U.S. negotiators were going to entice China into making
a commitment to cut carbon emissions, the U.S. needed to jump first. But
Obama's hands were tied. The U.S. Congress was not going to pass
global warming legislation, so the only option was executive action.
Everything depended on the EPA rules on power-plant pollution, which were still
in the works, and dependent on withstanding court challenges – not at all
a sure thing.

"A CANDIDATE WHO DENIES THE REALITY OF CLIMATE
CHANGE," SAYS PODESTA, "WILL HAVE A HARD TIME GETTING ELECTED
PRESIDENT."

Still, after some discussion
between the White House and the State Department, Obama gave them the go-ahead
to pursue a deal. After Stern made the phone call to Xie in February, Kerry
broached the idea with many key figures in the Chinese leadership, including
President Xi, on his swing through Asia a few days later. The response: " 'Oh,
this is interesting,' but they were not eager to pursue it," Podesta says.
It became clear it would take presidential muscle to get any kind of a deal
moving. In mid-March, Obama sent a private letter to President Xi that brought
up a range of subjects, from the nuclearization of North Korea to territorial
disputes in the South China Sea, but which also pushed for a climate agreement
between the two nations. The gist of the letter, according to Podesta, was that
" 'this could be meaningful, if we both make serious post-2020
contributions.' "

Soon after Xi, whom Schell
describes as "a ruthless utilitarian," ascended to the role of
China's president in 2013, he had traveled to Rancho Mirage, California, to
meet with Obama for two days of informal talks, where, among other things, they
struck a deal to limit emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, a climate-eating gas.
Schell describes their relationship as wary, but pragmatic. "There is no
warmth between them," he says. "There is a lack of trust, a paranoid
attitude toward each other. But also an awareness that they have to work
together."

President Barack Obama shakes hands with Chinese President Xi
Jinping (R) after a joint press conference at the Great Hall of People in
Beijing, China on November 12th, 2014. (Photo: Feng Li/Getty)

Obama's hand was
strengthened in early June, when the EPA formally announced the Clean Power Plan, which would cut
carbon from power plants by 30 percent by 2030. The result of a 2013 executive
action in which Obama instructed the agency to come up with new regulations on
power-plant emissions, the plan was well constructed and would likely hold
up in court. It was an important sign of the seriousness of the
administration's effort, and it gave U.S. negotiators leverage to say to the
Chinese, "Hey, we mean business."

A few weeks later, a swarm
of U.S. diplomats, including Kerry, Podesta and Stern, flew to Beijing for the Strategic and Economic
Dialogue, a high-level diplomatic meeting between the United States and
China. I accompanied the U.S. delegation on this trip. There was a lot of talk
about what kind of commitment the Chinese might make in Paris and about what
the U.S. could do to strengthen that commitment, but no indication, on or off
the record, that a secret deal was in the works. But clearly, talks were
serious. The day before the official meeting, Podesta and Stern, as well as
U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, spent a full day at the Diaoyutai State
Guest House with their Chinese counterparts, going over economic modeling
results and various technological options, trying to get a sense of what the
costs of various levels of carbon reductions would be.

In addition, Stern and
Podesta had one-on-one meetings with Xie Zhenhau and Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli
("the man with the portfolio," Podesta says). "They told us we
might be able to put a deal together, but not until 2015," Podesta
recalls. "But Todd and I both thought there was potential to do something
earlier." U.S. negotiators knew that the sooner the deal could be announced,
the more leverage they would have to shape the outcome of the Paris
negotiations.

But the complexity of these
negotiations is hard to overestimate. For one thing, CO2pollution is on some level a
proxy for economic development, so agreeing to cut carbon emissions is
tantamount to calling for limits on economic growth – a tall order on its own,
but even more difficult in an atmosphere of deepening distrust. "It is
very hard for either side to believe what the other is saying," says Li
Shuo. "There are many cultural barriers, and a long history of
suspicion on both sides."

On the final day of the
conference, I took a walk around the grounds of the Diaoyutai State Guest House
with Stern. He seemed tense, unsure any deal could be worked out, and not even
clear what kind of goal the Chinese might be willing to commit to: "Will
it be a carbon cap? A coal cap? A renewable-energy quota? We are not
sure."

The U.S. negotiators left
China in a somber mood. During the first week of September, Obama sent
President Xi a second letter. "It was a focused two-page letter on what
could be delivered during the November APEC visit to Beijing, and it emphasized
the climate joint announcement," Podesta told me. But if Xi was serious
about pursuing this deal, he didn't show it by appearing at the U.N. Climate
Summit in New York later that month. It was interpreted by some outsiders as a
signal that the Chinese were not gearing up to make a serious commitment in
Paris next year. Instead Xi sent Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, who asked to meet
with Obama in New York, which, Podesta said, was "unusual."

At that meeting, Zhang told
Obama that Xi had decided to do the deal – and that he wanted to announce it in
Beijing around the time of the APEC summit. But many details were still
unresolved – including the all-important question of how strong the targets
would be. For an agreement to have any meaning, the U.S. and the Chinese had to commit to carbon reductions that were
both significant and credible.

During the last week of
October, Podesta and Stern traveled to Beijing to meet with Xie Zhenhau and
others at the National Development and Reform Commission. It was there that the
Chinese finally put numbers on the table. The key figure was their pledge to
cap carbon emissions by 2030. While carbon restrictions that don't go into
effect for 16 years in the future may not sound significant, for a country as
big and fast-growing as China, such a promise translates into huge reductions
over time. (Climate scientist Raymond Pierrehumbert estimates that the
cap, if extended out to 2060, would reduce China's carbon pollution by 790 gigatons
over business as usual.) U.S. negotiators were not overjoyed by China's offer.
"We wanted sooner than 2030, but they told us that 2030 had been cleared
by the Standing Committee [i.e., the leaders of China's Communist Party],"
Podesta says.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (C), flanked by US ambassador
to China, Max Baucus (L), and White House advisor John Podesta (R), speaks to
his Chinese counterparts during a 'Strategic Track Plenary Session' in Beijing,
China on July 10th, 2014. (Photo: Jim Bourg/AFP/Getty)

For the U.S. team, the
carbon-reduction targets that they put on the table were a mix of technical
capacity and political aspiration. They had to be deep enough to be meaningful,
but they also had to be politically plausible, given the fact that there is no
chance of anything moving through Congress in the next two years and the
unpredictability of the 2016 presidential election. The number they came up
with, 26 to 28 percent by 2025, represents the greenhouse-gas reductions
proposed under existing U.S. law, plus possible further reductions based on
executive actions the president may take during the rest of his term.
"It's a serious commitment," says Stern, essentially requiring the
United States to double its rate of carbon reductions in the next decade.
Twenty-eight percent, says Stern, puts the U.S. on a straight-line path to 80
percent reductions – from 1990 levels – by 2050, a broadly shared goal within
the international climate community.

Still, these targets – which
were voluntary, after all – were nowhere near enough to put the world on track
to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), which is
the level scientists have identified as the threshold for dangerous climate
change. But negotiators on both sides knew the deal could be nonetheless deeply
significant, for it could shift the political calculus of international climate
negotiation and virtually assure some kind of success in Paris next year, when
an agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol is supposed to be finalized.

"The question was, once
we settled on the targets, was this deal significant enough for an announcement
from the presidents of both countries?" says Podesta. Stern and Podesta
weren't sure. By China refusing to cap CO2 emissions until 2030, the
U.S. team knew it would be open to the charge that we were giving China license
to increase its carbon pollution for 16 years, while making costly promises to
double our own reductions in the same period. But they saw a solution: The
Chinese had mentioned they'd set an internal goal of generating 20 percent of
their nation's power from nonfossil fuel sources by 2030. (To meet the
goal, the Chinese will essentially have to build the equivalent of the entire
U.S. electrical system in the next 16 years – and do it with wind, solar and
nukes.) U.S. negotiators pushed the Chinese to make this goal part of the
agreement. But the Chinese were hesitant to go public with it. In addition,
they wanted language in the agreement about different obligations between the developed
and the developing world that the U.S. team couldn't live with. For the second
time in just a few months, Podesta and Stern left Beijing not sure they'd
be able to make a deal at all.

In the next few days, there
was a flurry of e-mail and phone exchanges. The APEC summit in Beijing was just
a week away, and the Chinese clearly wanted to have something big to announce.
But as Obama flew to Beijing, there was still no deal. Podesta told the
president they were close to an agreement, but they were still juggling the
language. The deal had to be "something we could feel good about,"
says Podesta. "Otherwise, we could still walk away."

The day before the summit
began, Podesta and Stern hammered out the last details. The Chinese agreed to
go public with the 20 percent renewable goal, as well as agreed to language
that they would work to hit the 2030 CO2 cap earlier and to
make clear that these reductions were made in the context of a long-term deep
decarbonization effort (a point that Podesta says was "very
important" to the president). In return, Chinese negotiators made
sure the distinction between the obligations of the developed and the
developing world was not lost in the agreement.

The next evening, Obama and
Xi met privately to discuss the agreement. "It was important to both Obama
and Xi to have real understanding where they were going with this, and to agree
to keep talking throughout the year as we head toward Paris," says
Podesta, who briefed Obama beforehand. "The thing everyone wants to avoid
is a last-minute Perils-of-Pauline situation like we had in Copenhagen."

In China, response to the
deal was straightforward: President Xi had not only pledged to clean the air
and reduce carbon pollution, he had proved his diplomatic chops by striking a
deal with the most powerful nation on Earth. "Xi was like a hedge-fund
manager who just acquired a trophy wife," one experienced Chinese observer
notes. "It's an affectation of being a great power." In the
developing world, there was criticism of the low ambition of the
carbon-reduction targets. "These commitments are nowhere near the
kinds of reductions we need to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or even 2
degrees Celsius," one South American activist told me.

The Forbidden City is covered by smog November 29th, 2014.
(Photo: Xiao Lu Chu/Getty)

But more practical-minded
observers saw the announcement as a major breakthrough. "In one move,
Obama and Xi broke the logjam of climate politics," says Jairam Ramesh, a
member of Indian Parliament and a longtime climate negotiator. "Until now,
China has insisted that the U.S. and the EU are largely responsible for climate
change. But this raises the bar for other nations."

The deal also has huge
economic implications both for fossil-fuel industries that dominated the 20th
century (i.e., the losers) and the alternative-energy entrepreneurs poised to
grab a much bigger piece of the world's energy mix (i.e., the winners).
"There is no question where the world is headed," says Podesta.
"Instead of thinking of the U.S. and China as two captains on two
different teams, it's a sign to everyone that we are both pulling in the same
direction." For tech investors, this kind of high-level alignment has a
powerful impact on strategic decisions about where to put their money. It will
particularly benefit clean-tech companies that can help the Chinese figure out
ways to integrate massive amounts of renewable energy into their grid.
"This is not some bullshit deal between [former U.S. Secretary of Energy]
Steven Chu and Tsinghua University," says Shah. "This is the U.S.
government saying to American companies, 'Go ahead, set up shop in China –
we've got your back.' "

Finally, the agreement
eviscerates one of the favorite talking points of climate deniers. "Their
argument has always been we can't do anything to cut emissions because China is
not doing anything," says Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode
Island. "Well, now China is doing something pretty significant, while
Republicans are still huddled in the dark castle of denial."

Of course, in the U.S., it
took conservatives 30 seconds to begin hammering the deal as an economic
suicide pact, arguing that the U.S. had committed to deep carbon reductions
over the next decade, while the Chinese agreed to basically do nothing until
2030. In a column titled "The Climate Pact Swindle," Fox News regular
Charles Krauthammer called the agreement "the most one-sided deal
since Manhattan sold for $24 in 1626." Among other things, Krauthammer's
argument ignores China's commitment to 20 percent nonfossil fuel power by 2030.
As Sen. Whitehouse told me, "The idea that China has committed to doing
nothing for the next 16 years is only true if you believe that Chinese leaders
are going to wake up on New Year's Eve in 2029 and suddenly build 1,000
gigawatts of clean energy in one night."

The more substantial
question is whether China and the U.S. can follow through on their commitments.
Ironically, the Chinese may have more credibility than the U.S. " 'Face'
is very important to the Chinese," says Schell. "When they commit to
something publicly, they do it." Podesta agrees: "The Standing
Committee has approved this commitment. The People's Congress will approve it.
It will be imbedded in Chinese law. That is significant."

The U.S. commitment, on the
other hand, stands on shakier political ground. As David Victor, professor of
International Relations at the University of California, San Diego, and author
for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, puts it, "It's not
clear yet if it is an Obama climate agreement or a U.S. climate
agreement." In the Senate, Mitch McConnell has already said that he will
use his new powers as majority leader in 2015 to launch a full-scale attack on
the EPA rules on power-plant pollution – if that attack is successful, it would
be all but impossible for the U.S. to meet its
carbon-reduction commitment.

Podesta, who will leave the
administration in early 2015 and will likely play a senior role in Hillary
Clinton's not-yet-announced presidential campaign, relishes the fight.
"They can investigate us, harass us, try to defund us," warns
Podesta. "But the president won't flinch on this. This is our line in the
sand."

The fact that implementation
of the EPA rules is likely to come in the middle of the 2016 election campaign
is just another part of the White House political strategy. "What will
become more apparent is that a candidate who denies the reality of climate
change will have a hard time getting elected president," Podesta says.
"The candidate who says, 'Hey, we've got a problem, I think we can work to
solve it' is going to win. I don't think you ever go wrong playing for higher
ground."

However this plays out in
the U.S., it is an indisputable fact that this deal has changed the odds for a
new global climate agreement in Paris in 2015. Big questions remain about how
much cash the West will pony up to help the developing world finance
clean-energy projects and adapt to climate change, but that can be resolved.
"This is a sea change in how we think about solving the problem,"
says Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid's senior climate-change adviser in London.
"We will get a deal in Paris now, I'm certain of it. Will it be enough?
No. But it will lay the foundation for the future. And it will say to the
world, for the first time, 'We are serious about this.' "

The United Nations
climate talks reached agreement on issues such as defining obligations of
rich and poor countries but left the bigger issue of how to slow down climate
change to be tacked by delegates at the Paris talks in 2015. Defining
rich-poor obligations was "a very important breakthrough," said
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.

After more
than 30 hours of extended talks, a global agreement on climate change was
reached over the weekend at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in
Lima, Peru. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed to a new deal that
forms the basis for a global agreement on addressing climate change. Supporters
say it marks the first time all nations have agreed to cut back on carbon
emissions. The final draft says all countries have "common but differentiated
responsibilities" to deal with global warming. The countries most
dissatisfied with the outcome in Lima were those who are poor and already
struggling to rebuild from the impacts of climate change. We host a roundtable
with guests from three continents: in Peru, Suzanne Goldenberg, U.S.
environment correspondent for The Guardian; in London, Asad Rehman, head of
international climate for Friends of the Earth; and in New Delhi, Nitin Sethi,
associate editor at Business Standard.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a
rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: After more than 30
hours of extended talks, a global agreement on climate change was reached over
the weekend in Lima, Peru, at the United Nations climate conference. The talks
were scheduled to end Friday but lasted two days into overtime. Shortly before
2:00 a.m. Sunday, negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed to a new deal
that forms the basis for a global agreement on addressing climate change. The
final deal will be decided next year in Paris. This is the president of the
talks and Peru’s environment minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal.

MANUEL PULGAR-VIDAL: [translated] Allow
me to tell you all that, as with all texts, this is not perfect, but respects
the positions of the parties and aims to be a product of its own, which is one
that is based on what has been proposed to the president of COP. And with
this text, we all are winners, no exceptions. I have heard from all of the
groups, and I have the absolute assurance that with the text we are to receive,
we are all winners.

AMY GOODMAN: The new climate
agreement is called the Lima Accord.
Supporters say it marks the first time
all nations have agreed to cut back on carbon emissions. The final draft
says all countries have, quote, "common but differentiated
responsibilities," unquote, to deal with global warming. The deal is not legally binding and gives
each country until next March to announce the amount it will agree to cut. The
countries most dissatisfied with the outcome in Lima were those who are poor
and already struggling to rebuild from the impacts of climate change.

For more, we
host a roundtable. In Lima, Peru, Suzanne Goldenberg is with us, U.S.
environment correspondent for The Guardian; in London, Asad Rehman,
head of international climate for Friends of the Earth; and in New Delhi, Nitin
Sethi, associate editor at the Business Standard.

DOHA 2012

1997 KYOTO PROTOCOL TREATY
EXTENDED BY NEARLY 200 COUNTRIES, December 8, 2012, at Doha, Qatar. The treaty was again not signed by the US, and will
cover “only about 15 percent of global emissions.” ADG
(Dec. 9, 2012), “Delegates Extend the Kyoto Protocol.”

Deal reached in Doha
to extend Kyoto
protocol

UN climate talks in Doha have
come to a point of agreement on the extension of the Kyoto
protocol, despite an objection from the Russian Federation.

After 36 hours of non-stop negotiation, delegates from nearly
200 nations in the Qatari capital agreed on Saturday to extend the protocol
limiting greenhouse-gas emissions until 2020.

Almost immediately after Qatar's
energy minister announced the agreement, Russia stated
its objection.

Al Jazeera's Nick Clark, reporting from the conference
venue, said Russia's
objection showed that despite the agreement, "not everybody is totally
happy" with the outcome of the two-week-long conference.

The extension of the 1997 UN-backed Kyoto Protocol will keep it
alive as the only legally binding plan for combating global warming even
though it will cover developed nations whose share of world greenhouse-gas
emissions is less than 15 per cent.

The 27-member European Union, Australia, Switzerland and eight other
industrialised nations agreed to the binding emission cuts by 2020. Each
signatory had already legislated individual targets.

The US has
refused to ratify Kyoto.
The protocol also excludes major developing polluters like China, the nation with the highest rate of
pollution, and India.

'Modest but essential'

"It is a modest but essential step
forward", Connie Hedegaard, European climate commissioner, said at
the conclusion of Doha Climate Gateway.

A statement released by the office of Ban Ki-moon, UN
secretary-general, said while he supported the outcome of the Doha conference as a
positive step, he "believes that far more needs to be done and he calls
on governments, along with businesses, civil society and citizens".

Kumi Naidoo, executive director of the environmental activist
group Greenpeace, said civil society was especially disappointed with the
outcome of the talks.

Follow our in-depth coverage of Doha COP18
negotiations

Speaking to Al Jazeera in Doha,
he said with "no emissions targets anywhere near what the
science" is calling for, what the agreement delivered was "at best,
baby steps".

He said that despite the presence of delegates from key global
players, "the winners have largely been" the fossil-fuel industries
- oil, coal and gas companies.

The talks, scheduled to end on Friday, were extended into
Saturday as delegates from rich and poor nations disagreed on funding.

Finance remains an issue as "the United States and the bigger states don't want
to make concessions for poorer states", Al Jazeera's Clark said.

Qatar, the conference's host,
had originally introduced the idea of extending the Kyoto Protocol, which
would have expired by the end of the year.

Question of funding

It also suggested putting off until 2013 a dispute about demands
from developing nations for more cash to help them cope with global warming.

The issue of funding to help poor countries deal with the
fallout from global warming and convert to clean energy sources
complicated the haggling by envoys.

"We cannot close the [negotiations] without
... finance," Pa Ousman Jarju, Gambian negotiator, said on Friday.

Developed countries are being pressed to show how they intend to
keep a promise to raise climate funding for poorer nations to $100bn per
year by 2020 - up from a total of $30bn in 2010-2012.

Developing countries say they need at least another $60bn between
now and 2015 - starting with $20bn from next year - to deal with a climate
change-induced rise in droughts, floods, rising sea levels and storms.

But the US
and the EU have refused to put concrete figures on the table for 2013-2020
funding, citing tough financial times.

DURBAN 2012

Hot
Air Ahead of Climate Meeting

This time in 2009, anticipation
was feverish in advance of the climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen. Two years later, as that
negotiation process reaches Durban,
South Africa,
expectations are somewhat diminished.

There is some hope that the Durban gathering, which
begins today, will prove to be a 'summit
of small steps,' with progress on such areas as cooperation on clean
technology and establishing rules and regulations for a Green Climate Fund.

But there will be no new
climate treaty emerging from the upcoming discussions; in fact, according
to the BBC's Richard Black, the principal division among the delegations is
that some (primarily the European Union and 'climate-vulnerable' countries such
as small island states) want to negotiate a treaty that is completed
by 2015 and 'begins to bite' by 2020 and others - well, don't. Black writes
that this latter bloc includes Brazil,
which has argued that 2012-2015 should be a "reflection phase;" India, which
says it should be a "technical/scientific period;" and some developed
nations which argue that a new treaty is unrealistic before 2018 at the
earliest. That latter grouping includes Japan,
Canada, and Russia; predictably, it also includes the United States,
where climate change continues to be the hottest of potatoes.

Last
week, for example, the Washington
Post reported that Congress had barred the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from establishing a proposed National Climate Service. The idea behind the service was to create a "one-stop
shop" on climate information, and "make it easier for people to find
information, such as seasonal growing outlooks and drought, wildfire and flood
forecasts." It would have cost no money - and, if anything, made the
agency's climate work more efficiently.

But, at a June hearing, Rep.
Andy Harris of Maryland
told NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco of his fear that "the climate
services could become little propaganda sources instead of a science
source." More recently, Texas Rep. Ralph Hall accused NOAA of operating a
"a shadow climate service operation," even though, as the Post article points out,
NOAA's climate data has, far from being in the shadows, "been public for
decades."

Never mind that the World
Meteorological Organization confirmed last week that greenhouse gas levels in the
atmosphere reached record levels in 2010 and that the rate of increase of
carbon dioxide is still growing. Never mind either that yet another study confirmed that the Arctic
is losing sea ice "on a pace and magnitude unlike anything the Earth has
experienced in the past 1,450 years." As long as NOAA doesn't establish a
new website to disseminate its 'warmist propaganda', all will be right with the
world.

Meanwhile, notwithstanding a
new release of supposedly revelatory e-mails stolen from climate
scientists in 2009, climate scientists keep on doing what climate scientists
do: adding to the sum of knowledge about climate science. One widely-covered
recent contribution, by a team led by Andreas Schmittner of OregonStateUniversity, argues that
the atmosphere's 'climate sensitivity' may be less than had
been predicted or feared. Although most forecasts suggest that a doubling
of atmospheric CO2 would lead to an average global temperature increase of
around 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (although it could be as low as 3.6F or as high
as 8.1F), Schmittner and colleagues used proxy data from periods of past
climatic extremes to argue that the most likely increase would be around 4.1
degrees, and perhaps as low as 3F (or as high as 4.7F).

That was enough for some to declare the paper "another in a long line of
revelations showing the scientific fraud at the heart of the anti-global
warming movement" and a sign that "warmist ideology is
crumbling" - apparently missing the part of the study that emphasized that
(a) increased greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming; and (b) a doubling
of CO2 could lead to warming of over 4 degrees F; to say nothing of Schmitter's
own observation that "very small changes in
temperature cause huge changes in certain regions. So even if we get a smaller
temperature rise than we expected, the knock-on effects would still be severe."

It is, of course, just one
paper; furthermore, others have expressed caution over the accuracy and
extensiveness of the study's data set, and pointed out that there are other factors, including
long-term feedbacks such as the melting of tundra and subsequent release of
methane, that the study does not address. There are questions, too, about the
sophistication of the models used, and even Schmittner concedes that “the range
that we estimate for climate sensitivity may be too narrow".

Besides, as Rachel Nuwer summarized in the New York Times: "While
climate scientists generally center their research around a potential doubling
of carbon dioxide, there is no guarantee humanity will actually stop its
emissions at that level, meaning the temperature increase could be higher than
the forecasts. The carbon dioxide level is up 40 percent already, emissions are
rising rapidly, and global negotiations to limit them have not been very
successful."

DURBAN CONFERENCE CONTINUED

No More “Green Capitalism”

We will save the markets, not the
climate. That is how we can summarize the outcome of the 17th Conference of
Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC) which
took place in Durban, South Africa between 28 November
and 10 December 2011. There is a striking contrast between the rapid response
by governments and international institutions at the onset of the economic and
financial crisis of 2007-08 in bailing out private banks with public money and
the complete immobility they demonstrate in response to climate change. Yet
this should not surprise us, because in both cases it is the markets and their
accomplices in government who come out as winners.

There
were two central themes at the Durban
summit; first, the future of the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012 and
the ability to put in place mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and,
secondly, the launch of the Green Climate Fund approved at the previous summit
in Cancun (Mexico) with the theoretical aim of supporting the poorest countries
to face the consequences of climate change through projects of mitigation and
adaptation.

After
Durban, we can
say that a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol remains empty of content. They
postponed any real action until 2020 and ruled out any binding regulations to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It was the representatives of the most
polluting countries, headed by the United States, who argued for an
agreement based on voluntary reductions and opposed any binding mechanism. The
Kyoto Protocol was already inadequate, and its strict application would lead to
a small slowdown of global warming. But now we are on a path that can only make
the situation much worse.

With
regard to the Green Climate Fund, as a first step, rich countries pledged to
contribute up to $ 30 billion in 2012 and 100 billion per year until 2020. In
the first place these amounts are insufficient. Further, no source of public
funds has been identified. Therefore, the doors are wide open to private
investment run by the World Bank. As has already been noted by social
movements, this is a strategy to “transform the Green Climate Fund into a
greedy employers’ fund”. Once again they are making profits from the climate
crisis and environmental pollution (investment banks have already developed a
range of financial instruments to intervene in what is called the carbon
market, emissions, etc.)

Another
example of the commodification of the atmosphere was the endorsement by the
United Nations of capture and storage of CO 2 as a mechanism for so-called
clean development, whereas this procedure is not intended to reduce emissions
and will help to seriously deepen the environmental crisis, especially in
developing countries that are candidates to become cemeteries of CO 2 in the
future.

The
results of the Summit
therefore cause an increase in green capitalism. South African activist and
intellectual Patrick Bond denounced it like this: “The trend towards
commodification of nature has become the dominant philosophical point of view
in environmental governance. ” In Durban, we
repeated the scenario of the previous summits, such as Cancun in 2010 and Copenhagen in 2009, where
the interests of large transnational corporations, international financial
institutions and the elites of the financial world, both North and South, are
given priority over the collective needs of the people and the future of the
planet.

In
Durban, not
only our future was at stake, but also our present. The effects of the ravages
of climate change are already being felt; including the release of millions of
tons of methane in the Arctic, a gas 20 times
more potent than CO 2 in terms of atmospheric warming. Then there are the
melting glaciers and ice caps which is resulting in a rise in sea level. These
effects are already increasing the scale of forced migration. In 1995 there
were approximately 25 million climate migrants; that number has doubled now,
with 50 million. In 2050, this number could be between 200 million and 1
billion people displaced.

All
indicators show that we are moving towards an uncontrolled global warming of
more than 2 °, which could rise to about 4 ° at the end of the century.
Scientists believe this will most likely trigger unmanageable consequences such
as a very significant increase of sea level. We cannot wait until 2020 to start
taking action.

But
with the lack of political will to tackle climate change, resistance does not,
however, dry up. In a movement parallel to Occupy Wall Street and the wave of
indignados which has reverberated round Europe
and the world, many activists and social movements met in a daily forum a few meters
from the official conference centre with their initiative called “Occupy
COP17.” Participants ranged from farmers struggling for their rights to
representatives of small island states like Seychelles,
Grenada and the Republic of Nauru
(Oceania, Micronesia)
who are threatened by an imminent rise in sea level, to activists against debt
who are demanding the repayment of ecological debt from the north to the south.

The
movement for Climate Justice shows the need to focus our lives and the planet
against the commodification of nature and the commons. Capitalism and its
elites are unable to provide a comprehensive response to the socio-climate
crisis which has led us to a productivist and predatory system. If we are not
to exacerbate the climate crisis with all its consequences we must
fundamentally change this system. The well-known environmental activist Nnimmo
Bassey said very clearly: “The summit amplified climate apartheid, where the 1%
richest in the world decided it was acceptable to sacrifice the remaining 99%.”

The agreements, reached on
December 11 in Cancun, Mexico, at the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference represent key steps
forward in capturing ...

Report back on
Cancun climate talks

Dear Dick,

Friends
of the Earth at Work in Cancun

Thank you for
joining with Friends of the Earth to influence the UN climate negotiations that
recently concluded in Cancun.

Now that the
talks have ended, we want to update you on the outcome of the negotiations and
let you know what’s next.

The outcome of
the climate talks in Cancun

Our team in
Cancun was made up of staff from Friends of the Earth groups on five
continents. We urged rich, industrialized countries like the United States, Japan
and Canada
to commit to aggressive responses to climate change, including rapid pollution
reductions. (These rich countries' pollution is overwhelmingly responsible for
having caused the climate crisis, so they have a responsibility to lead in
solving it.) Unfortunately -- but not unexpectedly -- that’s not what happened
in Cancun.

Instead, on the
final night, the president of the conference, Mexican foreign minister Patricia
Espinosa, introduced negotiating texts that supposedly resolved disagreements
between the various countries. In
reality, the texts papered over many disagreements, including questions as
basic as whether emission reduction commitments should be legally binding.

On the crucial
question -- cutting pollution -- the texts fell dramatically short, merely
noting individual countries' voluntary emissions pledges. These
already-existing pledges are so weak that they could lead to as much as nine
degrees Fahrenheit of warming -- far more than what scientists say is
acceptable.

The texts also
open the door to new “carbon offsets” and other loopholes that allow
industrialized countries to avoid making needed pollution reductions at home.

One positive
note: the texts establish a Green Climate Fund that will support developing
countries in coping with climate change impacts and transitioning to clean
economies. This has been a Friends of the Earth priority. (Read a longer
analysis of the texts here.)

After Espinosa
introduced the texts, Bolivian delegate Pablo Solon asked for time to review
and debate them, but Espinosa demanded a take-it-or-leave-it decision. Despite
Solon’s objection that there was no consensus, Espinosa said the texts had been
approved and would henceforth be known as the “Cancun Agreements.”

Where does this
leave us?

Many observers
cheered loudly at the adoption (which is still being contested by Bolivia) of
the Cancun Agreements. But expectations had been set so low that only a
complete abandonment of the UN process would have been seen as a failure.

While many
developing countries acquiesced to adoption of the Agreements, this should not
be read as a sign of unambiguous support. Several delegates privately expressed
disappointment to us. But these delegates were under significant pressure not
to object to a weak deal, as they’d seen how foreign aid had been cut from
countries that refused to sign up to last year's Copenhagen Accord.

The
international negotiations will continue. Many of the disagreements papered
over in Cancun will resurface a year from now at the UN climate summit in Durban, South
Africa.

So what’s next?

The most
important thing that those of us in the United
States can do to increase the prospects for success in Durban is to move both
politics and policy at the domestic level to a better place.

In terms of
policy, we need to show the world that we’re serious about reducing our own
emissions. Our key task over the next year will be to defend the EPA’s
implementation of Clean Air Act protections against climate pollution --
protections that can cut emissions from coal-fired power plants and other
sources of heat-trapping gases. We will need to defeat Republican attempts to
roll back this law.

Also crucial
will be our work to phase out taxpayer subsidies to the fossil fuel industry
and other polluters. It’s time for the government to stop handing corporate
welfare to the oil, coal, and corn ethanol industries, and it’s time to start
investing in real climate solutions instead. We secured the creation of a Green
Climate Fund in Cancun. Now we must influence
its design over the next year so that it operates on democratic, just, and
environmentally sound principles, and the U.S. must ante up and contribute to
it.

In terms of
politics, we need to build a stronger grassroots movement that supports climate
solutions, and we plan to work with supporters like you to accomplish this. We
also need to shift the debate so it’s clear to politicians that denying climate
science and cozying up to polluting industries is unacceptable, and that
advocating for a healthy climate is a pathway to political power.

Additionally,
we need to make sure the Obama administration understands that bullying other
countries into accepting the lowest common denominator is a recipe for
disaster.

There’s a lot
to do in the year ahead, but together we can make a difference. Thanks for
having joined with us in these fights this year; if you want to further support
this work and haven’t yet made an end-of-the-year contribution to Friends of
the Earth, you can do so here. (If you’ve already made a contribution, thank
you!)

The
Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change, which commits its Parties by
setting internationally binding emission reduction targets.

Recognizing
that developed countries are principally responsible for the current
high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than
150 years of industrial activity, the Protocol places a heavier burden
on developed nations under the principle of "common but
differentiated responsibilities."

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11
December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. The detailed
rules for the implementation of the Protocol were adopted at COP 7 in
Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2001, and are referred to as the "Marrakesh
Accords." Its first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in
2012.

New commitments for Annex
I Parties to the Kyoto Protocol who agreed to take on
commitments in a second commitment period from 1 January 2013 to
31 December 2020;

A revised list of
greenhouse gases (GHG) to be reported on by Parties in the
second commitment period; and

Amendments
to several articles of the Kyoto Protocol which specifically
referenced issues pertaining to the first commitment period and
which needed to be updated for the second commitment period.

On 21
December 2012, the amendment was circulated by the Secretary-General of
the United Nations, acting in his capacity as Depositary, to all
Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in accordance with Articles 20 and 21 of
the Protocol.

During
the first commitment period, 37 industrialized countries and the
European Community committed to reduce GHG emissions to an average of
five percent against 1990 levels. During the second commitment period,
Parties committed to reduce GHG emissions by at least 18 percent below
1990 levels in the eight-year period from 2013 to 2020; however, the
composition of Parties in the second commitment period is different
from the first.

The Kyoto mechanisms

Under the Protocol, countries must meet
their targets primarily through national measures. However, the Protocol
also offers them an additional means to meet their targets by way of
three market-basedmechanisms.

The mechanisms help to stimulate green
investment and help Parties meet their emission targets in a
cost-effective way.

Monitoring emission targets

Under the Protocol, countries' actual
emissions have to be monitored and precise records have to be kept of the
trades carried out.

Registry systems track
and record transactions by Parties under the mechanisms. The UN Climate
Change Secretariat, based in Bonn, Germany, keeps an international transaction log to
verify that transactions are consistent with the rules of the Protocol.

Reporting is done
by Parties by submitting annual emission inventories and national reports
under the Protocol at regular intervals.

A compliance system
ensures that Parties are meeting their commitments and helps them to meet
their commitments if they have problems doing so.

AdaptationThe Kyoto Protocol, like the Convention, is also designed to
assist countries in adapting to the adverse effects of climate change. It
facilitates the development and deployment of technologies that can help
increase resilience to the impacts of climate change.

The Adaptation Fund was
established to finance adaptation projects and programmes in developing
countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. In the first commitment
period, the Fund was financed mainly with a share of proceeds from CDM
project activities. In Doha, in 2012, it was decided that for the second
commitment period, international emissions trading and joint
implementation would also provide the Adaptation Fund with a 2 percent
share of proceeds.

The road ahead

The Kyoto Protocol is seen as an
important first step towards a truly global emission reduction regime
that will stabilize GHG emissions, and can provide the architecture for
the future international agreement on climate change.

In Durban, the Ad Hoc Working Group on
the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) was established to develop
a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal
force under the Convention, applicable to all Parties. The ADP is to
complete its work as early as possible, but no later than 2015, in order
to adopt this protocol, legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal
force at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties and
for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020.

A small number
of the countless capillaries constituting the US NSS (National Security
State: secrecy, surveillance,
corporations, Pentagon, Congress, White House, mainstream media (MM), education)
are exhibited in my books Control of
Information in the U.S. and Control
of the Media in the U.S. The
following excellent essay by Bruce Gagnon shines a light on one instance of the
NSS. Our peace, justice, and ecology movement
will be victorious once its adherents join Gagnon and the many other brilliant
and brave critics who understand the
system (understand why these climate conferences failed)and decide to dismantle it. --Dick

I was recently sent an
email alerting me to a conference at the University of Maine that appears to be
about dragging us into another one of the oil-i-garchy's latest chaos
zones. I inquired about attending but was told it was "sold
out". Here is a bit from the invite:

The University of Maine School of Policy and International Affairs and
the Maine Army National Guard will co-host a
conference May 20 to 21 to explore challenges and emerging opportunities in the
Arctic. The free conference, "Leadership
in the High North: A Political, Military, Economic and Environmental Symposium
of the Arctic Opening," will be held at the Maine Army National Guard
Regional Training Institute in Bangor.
Speakers will address global, national and state issues and implications
related to diminished sea ice in the Arctic,
including the changing environment, trade, geopolitics and policy.

Scheduled speakers include: Gen. Charles Jacoby, commander of North American
Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command; Rear Admiral
Jonathan White, oceanographer and navigator of the Navy, director of Task Force
Climate Change; Paul A. Mayewski, director of the UMaine Climate Change
Institute; Major-General Christopher Coates, deputy commander, Canadian Joint
Operations Command, National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces; Philippe
Hebert, director of Policy Development for Canadian Department of National
Defence; and John Henshaw, executive director of Maine Port Authority. And
officials from the U.S.ArmyMountainWarfareSchool
will share experiences and display cold-weather operations equipment.

The words "emerging opportunities" jumped right out at me. The
Arctic region is loaded with oil and natural gas and with extreme melting of
the ice the oil corporations are itching to get at it. But look at a map
to see which country has the largest land border with the Arctic... it is Russia.
Thus we see this intense US-NATO move
toward militarization. In order to build public support for this new "strategic
plan" they are throwing out some financial incentives - the only job
creator in town anymore, the military
industrial complex. America
is being hollowed out and turned into a garrison state for global capital.

The
Pentagon has created the "US Navy Arctic Roadmap: 2014-2030". The plan includes such gems as the Navy needing
ways to distribute fuel in the [Arctic] region to air and surface
platforms. Fuel allocation needs to be staffed and protected which means
bases will be built. How close would they be to Russia and how
would that go over? The current US-NATO movement of major offensive
forces along the Russian border, having used the Ukraine crisis as a pretext, helps
the military more “effectively control" the Russian bear in the event of future
conflict over Arctic resource extraction.

Late last March the Navy tookNew York Timescolumnist Thomas Friedman, Sen. Angus
King (I-ME), and others for a submarine ride below the Arctic ice. Friedman wrote:

“In our lifetime, what was [in effect] land and prohibitive to
navigate or explore, is becoming an ocean, and we’d better understand it,”
noted Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations. “We need to be sure
that our sensors, weapons and people are proficient in this part of the world,”
so that we can “own the undersea domain and get anywhere there.” Because if the
Arctic does open up for shipping, it offers a much shorter route from the
Atlantic to the Pacific than through the Panama Canal, saving huge amounts of
time and fuel.

Our Sen. King here in Maine sent around an email
calledImpressions from the Arctic. He told his constituents that
there has been "a 40% reduction in ice as a result of global
warming" He reported that "previously inaccessible" gas
and oil reserves were now going to create "new opportunities".
King concluded, "I am convinced we need to increase our capacity in the
region, something I intend to press upon my colleagues on the Armed Services
Committee as we work on our military priorities for the coming years."

King's state of Maine builds destroyers, armed
with so-called "missile defense" (MD) systems that are key elements
in PentagonPrompt Global Strikeplanning. After a US first-strike attack is launched at China or Russia, the MD "shield"
helps take out any retaliatory capability. It's a gun to the head which
sometimes does not need to be fired to be effective - the threat in and of
itself is bad enough.

I’m sad that I couldn't get a ticket to get into
the Arctic event in Bangor.
Funny that a public institution like the University of Maine
would limit participation. But then again I'm not surprised at all.